AOpen XC Cube EU965

Verdict: Core 2 performance in a shoebox.

If you've ever tried to lug a full-sized kitted-out desktop tower to your mate's house, you'll know the obvious benefits of owning a small form factor PC. A system built in the diddy XC Cube EU965 is much less likely to render your arms limp and useless, and its diminutive features also mean that it won't look massive and out of place on top of your desk.

While Shuttle's SFF kits seem to have steadily grown in size and weight over the years to accommodate ever-larger graphics cards and more powerful PSUs, the XC Cube EU965 stubbornly bucks this trend. This is in one of the smallest new SFF chassis we've seen, and it's similar to the XC Cubes of old, such as the EX915G.

The black and silver front panel is new, although it's constructed from lightweight, shiny plastic, which isn't quite on a par with the solid build quality exhibited by Shuttle's offerings. That said, it has simple styling that looks good while not drawing attention to itself.

The EU965's miniature motherboard has plenty of tasty bang-up-to-date features, since it's based around the Intel G965 chipset. Its LGA775 CPU socket offers support for Intel's latest Core 2 CPUs, and there are two DIMM slots for DDR2 RAM, which you'll want to fill with at least two 1GB sticks if you plan to use Windows Vista. There's one 5.25in optical drive bay, and two 3.5in bays, one of which is externally accessible if you want to fit a floppy drive or memory card reader. The on-board audio is 8-channel Intel HD and, as well as the full array of analogue outs, there are two S/PDIF outputs, one coaxial and one optical - although quite why the optical output is situated on the front of the case is a mystery.

As it's the 'G' version of the chipset, integrated graphics are built into the Northbridge. However, while ticking all the boxes for Vista's swanky new 'Aero' interface in terms of specs, the Intel GMA X3000 GPU proved to be woeful for playing games, and on the EU965, it's also limited to an analogue VGA output, even though the chip is DVI-compatible. Thankfully, therefore, there's a single PCI-E expansion slot on-board, so you can install a proper graphics card.

The left side of the EU965's U-shaped cover has a large perforated section that allows air to be sucked in, while the heavy copper CPU heatsink and fan funnels the warm air out of a much smaller vent in the right-hand panel. If you're using the on-board graphics, this setup provides good ventilation for the case. It's a pain that there's no dust filter though; as the vent simply comprises an array of holes, it will be easy for dust to get inside the case. Installing a graphics card blocks the majority of the vent too, as we found when we put an Nvidia GeForce 7950 GT in the single PCI-E slot. This is just about the largest and most powerful graphics card that you can expect to fit in the EU965 at the moment; as the PCI-E slot is situated close to the left side panel, there's no room for a card with a dual-slot cooler.

As the EU965 was almost starved of a supply of cool air, the baking Intel Northbridge chipset and our 2GB of Corsair RAM had free rein to swamp it with heat. While our test PC remained stable throughout our benchmarks, after a couple of hours under 100 per cent load, the case of our Samsung SpinPoint hard disk had become too hot to comfortably touch; such high temperatures aren't good news for a hard disk's reliability in the long term. The 80mm fan on the CPU HSF did an admirable job, though, with excess heat pouring out of the right-hand side vent. Considering the amount of heat created by our high-end components, this cooling setup also remained respectably quiet at stock speeds.

In order to keep the chassis small, the built-in PSU, a modest 275W model, is tiny and, in these times of titanic oversized PSUs, such as the 1kW Enermax Galaxy, we initially thought that the EU965 would be too weedy to power our test kit. We were wrong, however; all of our benchmarks were completed without a hitch with the regular test kit installed.

In fact, the main issue we experienced with the PSU was its connections. The motherboard has three S-ATA II ports, yet there are no S-ATA power connectors on the PSU, and only one Molex to S-ATA adaptor is included in the box. Similarly, the graphics expansion slot is PCI-E, but there's no PCI-E plug among the cables. This is especially disappointing considering that a Molex to PCI-E adaptor uses up two precious Molex plugs. While we eventually managed to power up the components after scouring through our big box of spare cables, AOpen should include a comprehensive set of plug adaptors in the box.

PERFORMANCE

On-board GPUs affect application performance, since they borrow from system RAM, but we were surprised by just how much the EU965 lagged behind when we used its on-board graphics. A score of 1.53 in our Paint Shop Pro test is disappointing from a system built around a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E6700 CPU. The GMA X3000 doesn't use much memory, but it was the cause of the low scores. As soon as we installed the GeForce 7950 GT, the EU 965's Paint Shop Pro test result jumped to 1.80, which is comparable to a P965 board. It was the same scenario with the other two application tests, so if you think the scores shown below are dreadful, remember that this can be easily fixed with a dedicated graphics card.

The EU965's BIOS doesn't allow for any extra voltage to be applied to the CPU, which is perhaps understandable considering the greater strain this would place on the PSU and voltage regulation circuits, not to mention the extra heat it would generate. However, there's an option to increase the FSB speed, and we successfully overclocked our 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E6700 to a decent 3.1GHz, with the system becoming unstable at anything higher than this.

With our CPU at 3.1GHz, the system's performance increased dramatically, with the overall scores rising from a decent 1.67 at stock speeds to a good 1.98 when overclocked. All things considered, this is a pretty powerful system to be housed in such a small case and powered by a 275W PSU. While certainly very hot, our system remained stable during overclocking, even when looping through 3DMark06 for a couple of hours, which attests to the efficiency of the heavy copper CPU cooler.

CONCLUSION

The XC Cube EU965 is a compact, lightweight and decent-looking piece of kit that can easily be carried under your arm. Compared with Shuttle cases, its price is temptingly low too. However, the EU965 definitely has its problems. We'd have preferred a more powerful PSU with modern connections and enough room for a dual-slot graphics card for it to truly tempt us for use as a gaming system. When compared with living-room-friendly cases such as the Zalman HD160XT and Antec Fusion we're also unsure as to whether the boxy XC Cube is quite right as a media centre PC. With all this in mind, the EU965 will probably only be attractive to those looking for a budget small games machine or high-end office PC, and you'll certainly need to buy a new graphics card if you want to get the best performance.